


citrus

by ruruka



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, werewolf au! awooooooo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 04:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15259749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Summary: he’s fallen for the adversary.





	1. Chapter 1

Stars.

Over him, the night sky is sugar spun round his hands. Dare they raise alarm to the soft padding of steps, it feels close to inevitable, though he's cautious all the same in lifting himself the delicate one over every twig and stone and leaf. Between each one he's found caught by the distraction of that winking across the sky, because Naegi's always been in love with the stars entrapping the boundaries of their universe, if only for their soft charm stroking comfort beneath his chin.

The arm outstretched so sudden before his chest provides a rivaling amount. He glances to the source, her face that tells no truths, back downward toward the low jutting branch so near to tickling his ankles.

"Ah," and his shoulders pinch into the wisp of a blushing laugh. "Thanks..."

The moon catches her eye, and she draws back in on herself to take hotter toward the front.

He walks along with a strict face frontways. They've got ground to cover tonight, acres splitting them from a destination only found for that distance, where they've no trail snuffling back to them for debris left behind. Motion draws his glance, a blur of sweatcoat scarlet leaping to the head of them all; she's corralled back within the group by their true leader's warning, mingles among them in repressed quiet though never loses the anticipation in her eyes. Naegi can't blame her- he's feeling it too, the tremble of every last nerve from tingles on the shoulders to outright burn through calves and feet that _ache_ for release. He wants to run. They all want to run. His tongue coasts over his lips, and he's prepped to give in to instinct only to be cajoled away from that tipping of the head. Behind them, a hollering breaks out into the firs surrounding. He's well past grateful that Kirigiri's overturned slice of a glare hasn't been directed his way.

"Hagakure," she tempts, thinning even further the glower, and the recipient coughs into a sheepish standstill. No longer does it drag fore he's begun to stumble forward again, until the leader throws focus the opposite at another abrupt shrill. Coming from just aside him, Naegi must look on in surprise as well to where she stands with palms cupping the top of her hair on either side. Between the fingers poke triangle tips.

"Ahahaha, sorry..." Komaru says beneath a maladroit smile, strains her expression into a clench before dropping her hands with all over relax. "I don't know if I can hold it in much longer..."

"Well, try harder," yaps Fukawa. Her spine curls into a crooked huddle in upon herself as she scuttles behind the group. He watches his sister glance back over one shoulder, cheekbones glazed sweet tea pink, to prod a tongue between the front of her teeth he notices stick out sharp and gangly beneath the gleam of the moon.

Naegi ushers his attention to the road beyond the trees. They’ve yet to travel this route before; it’s lacking the same rural charm as their favored tresses of field space, though they’d decided most mutually that the vermillion glint through the eyes of Nevermind’s pack wasn’t worth battling for it. This map was chosen by Hagakure and his groundbreaking snuffles, a point westward that he’d called perfect intuition (Asahina had called a blind choice). Six sets of yearning feet had taken the direction no matter, too dirty with crave to care for the logic. He scratches the cotton of his collar.

When the sleepy houses dwindle off, he’s left to gaze on black lawn patches, a street lamp across the way silent to their touches. Relieving, though his next step forward lands him a mouthful of hair gasped inward. He’s sandwiched between Hagakure’s bump into his own back and the finishing toast of Fukawa thunking behind, quick as all hell on wheels to recoil back and spit offended at the ground. But he cannot spare the liberty. Ahead rests danger’s stink.

Kirigiri doesn’t bother the facade of imposition, lays her arms over one another to stare down the guttural chainsaw growls approaching them, low slunk, drawling. She’s the alpha bitch, that wolf drawing toward them on fang clawed paws. Naegi can smell it from a meter away. The group on her either side crawls skimpy, one of sleek black as her own with ears pressed flat and eyes refusing any match; an auburn coat covers the other, looking a pup but carrying the same scent as the rest of her pack. And that pack- Naegi feels a lump form up in his throat thinking on how vast he’s certain it once spread, now dwindled to three just the same they the six have endured over time.

He’s spent so long fawning over the little details that blinking back to life shines the spotlight on the hind legs of sleek olive brunette kicked to life. Lips purse together. Komaru’s always held the least self control of them all.

The mirroring pack’s leader snarls, lurches out her echoing bark. Fingertips disappear in several snaps to find four paws on the ground, tongue lolling out tilted head, yipping back an affable melody to their newfound rival. She does not take it kindly. A flash of elegant silver whips between the two when the second bitch lunges. Her jaws clash with Kirigiri’s several thick crosses.

“Yahoo!” Asahina grins into a backbend, those arms supporting her crunching so sweetly until a massive chocolate lab of a wolf rests rolling on her back in the grass. Another pants stupidly along beneath a dark corded coat covering every last cell save nose and tongue. Within it all, Naegi stands quiversome. He’ll stand nothing at all should he remain in his scrawny state of skin among all the snapping teeth, and Kirigiri could handle thrice the amount of adversaries all on her own, he knows, especially with the way the other two shrink back away from their group, but she’ll tire an extra hour off with the strength of care at one side. He out lets a breath, fingers tugging his front zipper down the same tune lids fall. The next second is a thrust forward at the chest; each joint shifts into oblivion, firecrackers bursting up the marrow. While it stings at each turn, the gratification of limbs elongating, spine sprouting tail ears flicking to the moon, it’s close to moan worthy. Besides- _gah_ -the snap of the jaw is the worst part. Soft brunette shimmies as Naegi snuffs his face about, shaking free the freedom to rush into action.

Sirens perk a dozen ears on instant.

That sound is the bane of his whole life, that whining, always right upon them. There’s a scream even shriller, somehow, and Naegi glances back toward Fukawa, still clothed in polyester and the filth of humanity, shivering at the knees, cupping the mouth harsh. She turns to her pack in frantic pale river eyes, lenses slipped crooked down the hook of her nose. “D-Don’t just stand there, mangy m-mutts- _run!_ ”

Looks exchange among them, most trained to Kirigiri, released from the fight as the wailing spins nearer. He’d sensed the trepidation the whole night through; suburban homeowners do not like the flavor a dozen wild dogs leave within their community. But they all look to their alpha for guidance now, instinct betraying, until it is that she bolts forward with wind flying her thick brush of a tail like a kite, and three sets of paws follow suit in the opposite direction back off into their territory stretch. The rest of them chase Kirigiri’s lead through the brush. No further than ten bounds does his peripheral seek out a stumbling mass of dark matted fur. Though she despises the change in such full heart, Fukawa would be no match for their speed on her natural spindles for legs, he’s sure she knows well.

They fly through the night with soil whipping beneath their claws. Naegi can feel his fat strawberry heart throb behind the mask of its ribcage. He has no eye upon the destination, only the chase, the wax of the sirens as he tears away at twice the miles per hour, spit flung from a flag waving tongue that retracts only to guide his howls. There’s no feeling comparable- he’d go celibate the rest of his days if only to keep this sensation alive. Froth sizzles down the front of his coat. It could use a brushing, but he’s no concern for cleanliness in such euphoria as the now.

One by one, the rest of his pack join in on the noise pouring up to the sky, snarling little whistles from the lips, raucous enough to rouse the neighborhood and caring not one second for it. Amid it, a look clicks with Kirigiri. She peers at him sidelong, until she, too, aims the nose high to yowl against dusk.

They stretch their muscles for deliciously aching miles.


	2. Chapter 2

Rivulets bow amidst his every contour. He’s not certain his nails will ever be rid of the dirt beneath.

Every last joint within him feels fire burnt to the stubs, yet all the same he’s been shot up with enough vim to keep him going the new day through. Sleep belongs nowhere within. At least, not until he meets his crash around noontime.

He leaves the bathroom with steam a trailing ghost. Just as soon as a footprint meets wetly to the kitchen tile, towel tugged to close shoulders, Komaru’s thick upon his trail. “Finally! I was about to go in and drag you out.”

It wouldn’t be a first. A towel massages through his hair in his turn over one shoulder to her retreat, fluff of a brunette tail vanishing behind the door’s click. Naegi snorts into rolling either eye.

He trails to find his bedroom, a trapeze artist around the clutter across his carpeting. The night prior- yes, it’s in his mind again, he can’t toss away such burdening ecstasy just yet -the night prior’s left him vibrating up all the bones, knows his sister’s suffering just the same fate with her giddy energy sprouting instinct each way, and he wouldn’t put it past thinking the others among them writhe in their own sheets this early morning with coats glossed over them. He’d had to focus himself stern enough to keep his tongue in his mouth twice already.

The routine of suppression they’ve taken to at their leader’s command suits them finely, though fine is only distant cousins something removed to favorable. They know she’s right, the less they change the better, the less anyone knows of them the better; he recalls the legends his father would spin before bedtime tuck ins of lycanthropes who shed so often their skin that they could never pull themselves back from nature (and Komaru had always sprung her teeth and ears up then and there to call it a goal, while he himself ended up beneath his parents’ comforter after an hour alone with the night). It’s pure myth, he’s since accepted, yet even still he’s quick to check himself clean between their scheduled monthly forest groupings. Kirigiri guides them well. He’ll follow her every command until they dig his grave for him.

His jacket is just zipping as knocks prattle the front door. In the chest rattles a thrum the same as it always does on that noise, and he’s slow to traipse out toward the living room on socked foot slides, and he’s slow to swallow and pull the knob clear. The shower thwaps behind his head. He peeks his nose through the crack he’s allowed of the front entry, tips it back inside to relief coiling his calves with confusion quick to follow.

“Ah, hi, Byakuya.” The threshold rests open for his viewing. Just cross, a hand rests in one hip pocket, casual as casual can be when tucked inside million yen silk suit threads. “Um- What are you doing here?”

The air sings soft between them once that hand reaches out to cup him at the back. He’s dipped to lips pressing on his own, move to his jawline, throat. “I’m allowed to visit my boyfriend whenever I like.”

“Mn-“ goes his answer as kisses clasp their mouths twinned anew. Hands roam the other’s chest. “...My sister’s home.”

He feels the scowl that mars the kiss. Togami relents backward, still holding him all the delicate, huffs out the nose to murmur, “You’re quite lucky to have that face of yours.” A breath in writes him rather in repulse. “You stink like a wet dog. What the hell have you gotten yourself into now?”

“Ehehe...” He draws back from him to offer an arm toward the sofa. His guest places himself upon its edge just as he always has in his few visits here, one leg folded atop the other and eyes bleeding scrutiny over the crime scene of tidiness’ murder case. Naegi very practically skates across the kitchen floor to duck within his bedroom again. The exit is found in hair massacred into total aridity and towels stuffed beneath closet bottom laundry.

“Tea? Cake?” Fingers grasp cabinet doors down the row as he throws hospitality over the shoulder. A glance shows Togami’s set a peer for his rolex to tilt censure up his spine. “It’s 10:00 AM, Makoto.”

“Oh, right, uh-“ Doors clack shut to dig instead among the lower pantries. “Oatmeal?”

His skull rattles in a wallop of it against the cupboard’s inside lip, but quick upon the defensive, he hadn’t expected to sway a look upward and match it to the folded arms of a tempt cut businessman looming a shadow along him. “You’re acting twice the fool as usual. Tell me what you’re up to- it’s related to why you refused me last night, I surmise.”

He lifts straightened, massaging to his head, and must wonder what within it has been calculated to be drawn to no nonsense demons this frequently. “N-Nothing’s going on, Byakuya, I promise.” It isn’t a lie, per se, though ending such a statement with _per se_ most always signals a hook upon the fabric; it isn’t a lie, nothing is special to pick out upon this morning, only that this is his third week of dating the atrociously handsome man he’d been cut in line at the bookstore by, which equates to this his first morning after adrenaline needing a force back down the throat for normalcy. Only that, and only that he’s stuffed this stun to his heart within a dome, one of knowing naught of his crusades beneath the carved round moon, and that those who partake in them haven’t heard of lick of this new toy’s existence. On either end, he’s shot to terror of what would come of truth. No mind now, yet, no mind when he’s moving forward to insist a simper, tuck arms round the other’s waist and kiss him pretty for distraction’s grace.

Another tumbles from the bathroom door. An average one’s grateful his sister does not stumble from the shower draped in nudity before a stranger- Naegi only cares to see she’s got her tail tucked back in this time around.

“Oh?” Komaru tilts her head lopsided. Water droplets peel down each limb. She’s just _staring_ their way, to her brother’s clasp around a phantom in their kitchen, eyes lined in wonder to their bottle top stretch, keeps the towel smart above the clavicle. “Hi, stranger with his tongue in my brother’s mouth. I’m gonna go to my room.”

Naegi stiffens in time to the latch of her door behind her. Touch finds his hips to anchor him comforted, draws his pale up by, “I suppose your reaction means this is your grand coming out story.”

“Um,” he swallows, leers over one shoulder and back righted. “...Kind of.”

A hand tips his chin into a make out that cares not for details.

Nosy little ladies care much for details, he knows. The morning’s carried another half hour of intimacy before he’s able to convince him of plans so suddenly recalled, cajoles him out to the hall with all the sympathy he can muster and promises to make it up to him soon, soon, and no sooner does the front door click does another fling open.

“Is that your-?”

“Yeah,” he nods, breathes in strength he knows he’ll need for her furthering, “Is he a-?”

“No,” and her face contorts into the shock he’s imagined over and over in his mind through sleepless rests. “He’s just...a human. Before you say anything-“

“Makoto! You can’t be all gross and kissy with some random human dude, you’ll get us all in trouble!” Her hands ball at her chest, steps forward with the determination passed down through shared genes, rivaled by his arms folded against each other, mouth wavering into a refusal of the eyes.

“I know it’s...risky,” he admits, swallows, winces. “But-But...I don’t know. ...I can’t help myself with him. He’s _perfect_.”

“ _Makotooo_ ,” and he knows it’d be no ease to win her over, and he knows if this is sweet brained Komaru’s reaction then facing Kirigiri will be thirty five nightmares twisted all at once. “This is dangerous! He’ll have to find out about us eventually. What if he rejects it and has us all arrested? What if he’s a silver maker?!”

Breeze laps the curtains behind them. Naegi sighs out all the same worries he’s folded over a dozen rounds. “He’s not, he sells stocks. Or something.” He blinks himself back to matching the air. “And we cant be arrested just for being lycanthropes. That’s like a-a hate crime, I think. ...It’s fine. _Please_ , Komaru, you have to trust me.”

Komaru does not trust him, if her blabbermouth proves any evidence.

“It’s totally insane, Naegi!” This summer meets them fresh, never abrasive in soaking the collars. Gentle. A canopy top shields the table they’ve chosen from slicing ultraviolet. Her mouth stuffs with a second honey slicked bread roll. “I wouldn’t care so much if it didn’t put _everyone_ in danger.”

“Gee...” is all he manages, slumps in upon himself aside a foreign reach toward the french fries piling his plate. Another brimmed mouth offers its wisdom. “I dunno about this, Naegichi. He could be carrying some kind of human disease. ...O-Or, he might be a vampire. They don’t have a scent, you know!”

“Hagakure, it doesn’t matter if he’s a stupid vampire!” Asahina snaps back, taking suddenly to frustration he’s all but outright sick to have caused. “What matters is that when Naegi turns into a big giant wolf in the middle of their date, he’ll come after all of us. It isn’t safe- what does Kyouko think of it?!”

“Uh.” His face cannot decide upon blanch or blush. Finger scratching the cheek, he lets his gaze fall upon the leaves skittering among the oaks around them, wishes to smell their depth as close. “She...doesn’t know about it yet...”

“Naegi!”

Her ire calls him into a flinch. “I-It’s not like I’m married to him or anything..! I just-I just have a boyfriend...is that so bad?”

“Yes!” she does to hesitate to drop. Fists find the hips. “There’s plenty of lycanthropes with a jawline, go for one of them instead.”

“Well, if he’s not some sort of creepy otherworlder, I think it’s cool.” He’s slung over the shoulders by support. “Naegichi should be happy.”

A smile dares to slink upon him, enough defiance for the debater across them to huff into a cross of the arms. “Fiiine... I’m super excited for you, of course! Just worried. And when Kyouko hears about this-“

“She doesn’t have to hear about it,” pleads his eyes, crystal beneath the afternoon glint. Asahina is no quick sucker for a pouty boy (were he pretty and frilly and sundressed, they’d find a whole separate fate now), though he attempts his best regardless, the look of begging brother to sister, tie strung on their littlest fingers connecting a set of six to familial morale. Komaru had gone and tattled on his newest rendezvous to the two about him now, gabbed to Fukawa on it for certain too, which all slaps harsh enough already without needing it be added that he have a boot heel cast upon his throat. Mostly proverbial, he’d like to think, but knowing Kirigiri Kyouko... He dips his head forward a drippy mess.

The next pull of it up straightened draws the cool strokes of post sunset through his vision. Sweet summer night light that lingers beyond love. And love, perhaps that’s what swings about him, perhaps he’d hate to point it out, and he’ll trade the life locking definition for a rathered infatuation, right. But he’s there, Naegi walking slow strides through parkland, and he’s there, Togami at his side who’d only agreed to be shooed from his apartment the morning prior in exchange for the next evening spent together. Naegi doesn’t quite yet fathom how this man’s taken to be such a romantic with him.

Even still, the brook hushes beneath the bridge they stop to rest upon, after dinner’s been dined and conversation been forced at first yet laxed over the hour, and Togami does not meet his eye though reads no offense. He can enjoy their time together, he can enjoy their time together without the immediate next thought jumping to how soon it should be forced to split whether by alpha syndrome demand or by paranoia gnawed the stem too close. Not that he worries for his suitor’s treatment toward he or his pack, rather that same pack’s overbearing overbear sure to singe his skin to ribbons sooner than later.

(Or, minus Hagakure, who’d offered out his care, though in the same breath he’s the type to rummage through back alley garbage even without the animalistic core, so Naegi isn’t sure the merit that can be placed upon it).

Togami dips a finger to his glasses. Were he the kind, Naegi would be furious for the treatment he’d received in return to the knowledge he’s got someone new, would strip his claws out right then to mark boundaries. But his flavor feels more strawberry soft serve than hot chili powder tea, and he’s got a boyfriend he quite quite quite has a soul garbling crush on, and he’s happy with that, happy that his reach to link their hands between them meets no rejection.

“Thank you for tonight,” mumbles against the brook. The air smells madly of grass and influence. “...I’m sorry I’ve been a little weird lately.”

“Mhm...” At last does he collect a peering, paired to calm with a thumb across his knuckles. Togami ventures no further. His silence fools the second for vexation, a clip up to mend so swift he’s no chance to park himself saved, “Um, I-I like you. A lot.”

Gradual for each motion, Togami draws from the bridge’s rail to place a palm on his jaw, works through the cowlicks to hold him within their meet at the center.

“I’m sure,” wisps once the kiss ends, quick to birth a twin that burns twice the oil.

Naegi would spend his next eternity here were the scent not so appalling.

Pulling back to himself grants him a glance about, frenetic, pinging, the touch clasped to his forearms relenting none to demand just exactly his sickness so suddenly. He perks around the other’s shoulder, sniffs another take. “...We should get going.”

“Makoto-“

Chainsaw revving claims attention behind them. Naegi is a split to split them, stands one pace ahead with an arm outstretched. No more than a meter off slinks the golden blonde beauty of a froth mouthed vixen, eight more eyes of gleaming scarlet soon to erupt from the shadows surrounding. Or, seven, if he were less poetic- the smallest stud bearing a gash over one side of the face though appearing no less vicious within his sandy shave, stance wide as he’s puffed his chest. Two more approach forward to attempt a circling whilst the gaudy pink tinge to the jet fur of the last hangs back behind their alpha. Naegi burns at every cell.

“Byakuya,” he says, and serves one second in a snap of the head around to tell him as stern as he’s to ever play, “We have to get out of here.”

Chin tilted mighty, Togami leers the wild dogs down until the newly appointed chief of the night picks up haste the opposite direction. He’s certain Togami will follow behind. He’s certain.

The wolves chant the same. Flash- it’s a full chase, where he and they and he have the head start though know it means no loss of challenge, and gravel slices his palms after a tumble to the knees, and no sooner has he become the leader is he dropped back into betahood again by a grip on his hood and lash toward an opposing direction. Togami ceases the hold once they’ve tucked themselves far beyond a tree lined brush, only safe to catch breaths the moment before his scent is caught again. For it, he ushers them toward the lot closest to front, and he’ll bet Nevermind couldn’t possibly care enough to send her army after a rolling car. She’d only wanted him off her newly increased, apparently, stretch of territory. He marks yet another area he’ll have to keep himself away from further forward.

Sidelong, Togami’s knuckles rest white to the steering wheel.

“Th...That was-was _insane_ ,” Naegi decides to pant out despite his more over acceptance of rivalry rules, but he’d like to keep his date on the trail of blindness. “Where did all those...coyotes come from?!”

His side view of the driver’s face spills incredulity. “What on Earth are you on about? Have you ever seen a coyote in your life?” A scoff cuts between the rhetoric. “There aren’t any _coyotes_ in all of Asia. And they aren’t as big as a goddamned minivan, I can assure you.”

Just maybe, he laid on the blinders too thick. “Right,” he flinches into. “...Maybe they were werewolves.”

The reaction could be much worse, much worse than pupils tossed upward and another click of the tongue. “Are you having a contest with yourself for how idiotic you can be?”

A wince draws his lids shut. Panic can bring out the nastiest sides of a man, he knows. So he’s glad that hasn’t happened here- Togami’s still bordering on his most benign.

“Sorry, that just...freaked me out.” That holds accuracy. He’s keen on the guidelines, though that means nothing as to his ability to handle the shock. He gazes on his hand, the drips of blood cast from its soft surface, and clenches it closed again around plain air. One thing’s been taken for sure- Togami finds the idea of his whole species well past ridiculous. It’s excellent, he’ll carry no suspicion should he wake to hair shed among the sheets or watch three hamburgers scarfed in one sitting. It’s excellent, and it tints him muddled rose to think on his truth never being spoken or else the bounds of a straight jacket will fix him.

He could always show him. The thought spurs a flame inside either thigh.

When he unfolds his hand, the injury’s mended itself clean, and street lamps begin to battle the growing dusk.


	3. Chapter 3

“It’s so sad what happened to them all...”

Summer boxes them all in one boundary. The television flutters something daytimey only for its noise, six of them dispersed across second floor living room furniture. Asahina sits cross legged on the couch’s middle cushion, hands tucked to the lap and top low cut. “There used to be a whole bunch of them, but they all got split up and went totally feral. I was friends with one of them once- Mahiru. I hope she’s okay, somewhere...”

“She’s only okay if she’s gotten b-burnt out with a silver bullet.” From the window behind them, fingers skittle through the blinds to peek down along the streets below. “That’s the-the only way to escape this hell.”

Caught up from dolor, Asahina tips her head into annoyance. “Way to brighten the mood, Fukawa.”

At the window’s second side, leather prods one slat of the same shades, some light case of paranoia entrancing them all the twenty four hours through. They’ve no way to help it, not with the whole world at the ready to go against them at any wrong move. But Kirigiri stands watch there, the guard dog of her own apartment scape, and she says, “Nevermind is too power starved to want any of us dead. We’ll keep away from that park Naegi encountered them in.” Her finger retracts to allow the shades their click together. “For now.”

“What were you doing there, anyway?” His sister lounges on the den’s carpet, focus melty upon the television commercial before them. Naegi stiffens most idly, worse for a quip from Hagakure sat beside her, “You weren’t doing doggy things without us, were ya?”

“No, no! Nothing like that,” he promises, cares not to catch Asahina’s leer from the spot beside him. “I was just...on a walk.”

“All by yourself?” Komaru taps her chin, while Hagakure meddles innocuously, “So late? You don’t know what kinda weirdos lurk at night!”

A chill settles the blood stirring in his nape once a shadow forms over it, and he glances _just_ so up toward Kirigiri’s stance above his seat, and he pushes a laugh to quell the orange marmalade anxiety within him. “It’s okay, I came back in one piece, right?” His nod works to calm himself and the rest altogether. “I’ll be more careful next time, I promise.”

“Naegi has a boyfriend,” Asahina blurts sans any warning. Her palms cup her mouth. Could he freeze any more in the core out, he’d make a lovely ice sculpture for a spring wedding. “Sorry, I couldn’t hold it in any longer.”

“It’s been, like, two days!” It works null to repair her, only shrugging into a smile so sweet and sheeply. Naegi, in a more laxed state of mind, knows she’s meant no harm by it. She’s the far too excitable type to be mixed with the catty office ear for gossip once each while, can’t keep a secret to save a dozen lives more than likely. She’s only been kindhearted and hyperactive Asahina, and somewhere beneath, she’s only trying to protect her pack.

Kirigiri bleeds a higher meaning to that notion.

“Hm,” is all shes time to say before Fukawa creaks up to take the far armchair beside them all and mutter, “I-It’s _sickening_...”

Perhaps. Kirigiri flicks a gaze her way before it turns solid again. “I know your type,” she says to him, curls a hip around the furniture to gather herself in slow movements toward the kitchen. Tea cups rest on the horizon. “Don’t bring another alpha here.”

The pink that claims him only worsens with Komaru’s healing. “Don’t worry, he looked pretty twinky when I saw him.”

“You saw him?” Asahina leans to pick up discussion with a broad smile. “What’s he look like? Is he handsome? Is he nice? Is he rich?”

“Makoto says he sells stalks. I don’t know how well the wheat market is doing, but-“

“ _Stocks_ , Komaru,” he huffs, though more than anything is he drowning in the relief that they’ve all busied themselves in the little specifics to spare him this once. “Like, money. Not grass.”

Eyes pinned to thought, she nods suddenly from her position on the floor, finger to the jaw. “Oooh, that makes more sense, I guess. So he is rich, then. He can buy me that pretty leash I saw in the fancy dog magazine.”

“I think Naegichi’s the only one who’ll be wearing the leash, eh, eh.” An elbow prods his middle in jest. Naegi drops a scarlet face to two palms.

Though she chortles on, Asahina offers two waves downward. “Oh, come on! That’s gross, I just wanted to know if he’s good looking or not.”

“Well, maybe,” Komaru permits. “But I don’t know how to judge how hot humans are, Makoto and Touko are the only weird ones into that.”

Porcelain clinks to the coffee table.

His fists knead the knees of his jeans. Naegi, in a more laxed state of mind, knows his sister’s meant to harm by the slip, but in this frantic energy can only picture throttling her.

Kirigiri stands over them with either hand freed. Tea steam has curled her bangs the slightest, poked her nose colored, though Naegi cannot tell so perfectly whether that lasts from the heat or the emotion clutching her harrow insides now. Her first movement stiffens his shoulders, but it is only a slide to sit with a hip brushing Asahina’s, plucking her fallen brassiere strap back up the grooves of her bicep and offering a saucer her way. “Five teaspoons of sugar, as you like.”

Asahina blinks, accepts the drink with a beam to warm the presenter. “Thanks, Kyouko!”

Another block sails by on storming waters, praying he’s to never glance away from front ahead, not to catch her catch him choking. They dwindle back to normalcy. He wishes too dearly to grasp Asahina’s wrist when she rises to leave.

That fact of matter, her exit clears the wall between the pair on the sofa, one folded at the ankles and tea cup empty in the lap, the other shriveled into woe. Tension furls palpable enough for Komaru to spring up and tug Fukawa’s sleeve until she gives in to driving her home while spewing insults the whole way; Hagakure’s side turned form rattles snores from the ribcage. Naegi thinks his need for a ride off could be his ticket out, were he not pinned in place as though stabbed upon a seven seas map, still with the lack of a look to him even once. It’s obedience conditioned along the years. It’s his spine riding rigidity too fine.

She inches forward in her seat. He swallows, can feel it, can feel it.

“You’ve rutted him.”

Color floods his skin in one pull. “No-No, no! I-I haven’t done anything like that, I...I...” Blinks glide into her side snap stare upon the contusions low of his throat. A hand itches across them to move her distraction along. “We’ve been going out for...about a month, almost. He’s really nice. Sometimes. Well- he’s handsome. And he cares about me, I can tell-“

“Get rid of him,” Kirigiri instructs swift and clean cut as ever, no mess left behind save for his mushy little thrum.

Naegi’s ear drums creak within his swallow. “...He’s a lot like you, I think.”

Plum pucker claims her look, and she’s all arms folded and cross through the heart; quite a lot, yes. Kirigiri does not offer sympathy on her trek off, throws him only a razor edge glare over a shoulder that speaks more than any syllable. _Get rid of him_ \- he’d more than else like to be rid of himself, were it possible. Be rid of the Naegi that’s so giddy for a charmer’s wit he’s rolled his whole world into cell tight inimical nori.

Hagakure kicks either leg out in the midst of slumber, fresh fields cast beyond the twitch of his eyelids, Naegi is certain. What he’d only give to be among them.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s no one’s business but his own what the hell he’s up to on a Saturday night. No one else has the right to his private life, the one in which he exists with love in the limbs like this, where he’s comfortable enough to sit in cotton house clothes and order in lo mein and gyoza for his coffee table, because his sister’s been shuffled off to hang out with other chatty cats this evening, because he’s invited his boyfriend over who everyone wants skinned alive, and he’s enjoying the company of warmth all over. It’s no one’s business but his own, so the nerves nudging his pulse to sing have no place here, yet the fear remains into every second.

“There’s no substance to his work, why anyone humors it is well beyond me.” A napkin corner smooths down his lips once they finish their firing, some tangent on some author after Naegi mentioned some book, something about something with the natural spitfire soul of Togami Byakuya mixed in, and they’re sailing on quiet comfort in his apartment’s den on a Saturday night upon which they’ve met for leisure. Naegi sets his glass down to the table before them. Sweat drips into the wood. He wonders how it is that his date’s yet to lose it trapped in the unconditioned air behind layers of coat and pant, though he himself delights in the stifle of fresh outdoors through the opened side window. Perhaps they’ve it in common.

His fingers pad to the bare lengths of each knee as he says, “I think you’re really smart,” and pops a pretty smile for the other to inhale.

Togami lifts his nose the slightest notch, and their mouths are locked before the minute ends.

Touch raises through honey blond. It’s no one’s business but his own.

That’s just exactly what he doesn’t catch himself thinking on throughout the crooning and the coveting, on the strands of his family strewn to the side opposing him, Kirigiri knowing so zero of this new clasp before she dismisses it gone. She’d come around if she knew what giving chances meant. He’d never blame her for the issues pricking beneath her skin- never, never, knows too keenly of the toil that’s raised frigidity all over. For the one upon him now, he’s sure a similar position fits, and he’d given him a chance after a chance meeting, and he’d listened to him bitch in his face a solid five and found himself apologizing after, spilling sorrow for whatever must plague him; and Togami, just a stranger, had taken a step south, had curled himself away and chased after him post two days of marveling still, an afternoon where Naegi had hardly recognized the man dipped beside his walk through the city to catch the supermarket sale, until it was that the bookstore had poked into the conversation and accepting an invitation to dinner ran tingles up his spine. He’d given him a chance. And he’d met the love of his eternity, perhaps. A tongue coasts his own.

“Makoto...” that love whispers to him, a kiss to the lips, a kiss to the jaw a kiss to the neck, sucking and licking a sweetheart tattoo to match the ones all up his collar. Buttons slip down his chest. He thinks he’s yet to taste flesh this delicious, raw, endless. Never has he been so deserving of praise as that afternoon upon which that chance had been traded, slick in affection to hear his name murmured again into the silk amber night. “Makoto... Nh- ow, Makoto- For God’s sake, are you trying to decapitate me?”

“Ah?” His lips shine beneath the lamp light. He draws a hand to them, touching on knife tip enamel all along the front enough for lids to peel back for horror. “Oh- eheh, I’m sorry,” the shield does not drop his turn a ways away. “I-I got a little, um... _excited_.”

Togami massages the bruise on his throat’s wall, fang imprints dipped around it. When Naegi shows his shy grin, his teeth have retracted to average, ruler edge, and his heart beats rapid for what could have been.

* * *

He can’t keep up with the pavement.

Pitiful is it for a wolf, ancestors of great ancestry itself, how pathetic that a wolf can call himself straining amidst a jog within his faux parlor boy pelt. Asahina is at least gracious enough to wade in place at the end of each sidewalk spurt to allow him to catch up.

“You good?” Summer sweat suits her as it does no other. She pants the most subtle burst, heaves in to beam at his nod forward. They continue rapping sneakers beneath themselves, alongside the suburbs, alongside the sunset, until she decides to even themselves out into a stroll. Perhaps she’d noticed his gasping flush, or the dark circling either underarm. Regardless, he’s grateful, choking past fatigue to match her gait.

“Thanks for coming with me,” she tells him after a few meters of regaining the breath. “It’s nice, right? Just clearing your head with a good run... You should join me more often!”

“Maybe,” and he licks his lips into laughter. “I kinda prefer running when I have four legs under me.”

Still, she’d shed truth. Wiping dew from the mind’s just what he’s needed, even more once the thought itself reminds him of all he bears, of the tension breaking each meeting of silver slits on his, of the attachment that brings it only growing with every aching moment. And it’d all be fine were he just born average in the world’s terms, not of a whirlwind romance betwixt man and nature; it occurs to him, as they’re dragging down the streets there, that that’s just exactly what he’s waging here, his unkempt intelligence colliding with foreign soil the same allure his father had fallen for so long ago to usher his own existence at all. A taste for the other side runs heredity. How...cute.

By the time he’s found himself beneath all the rubble, he’s forgotten at all what’s brought about Asahina’s cheshire smirk, winking into a lift of ligaments lurching stretched. Woe guides his shocked staring.

“Well, why not?” she responds, that hand forming claws at each tip, soon joining in the pop of the knees yelping, and Naegi has no time to argue before she’s spun herself up into a Hershey melt mutt for the night to drink.

Seconds lose the sight of her.

Naegi had just known from the start he’d be a complainer.

“How can one man possibly lose so much hair? It’s like you’re _shedding_ , Makoto, my God.”

One man can possibly lose so much hair when he’s a dandelion mimic to begin with, and when it all shimmies to the roots for fresh grown trim after a jog turned run for freedom and fantasy, even if the streetlights had worried him alongside Asahina’s slobbering howls deep into brush. That works always harder the power to clear his mind. And he’ll need the space- a night spent among Togami’s sheets most always stuffs it brimming.

A hand swipes along those hundred thousand threads now, brushing a pile of brunette from one to another off the bed as night further fades. The lamp guides their eyes to catching. Naegi can only shrug his embarrassment into a laugh.

The exchange is a push to the rug for a jaunt to the waste bin, back again to huff and to tug the comforter back upon him as he draws them both centered. Strokes run gentle through the rest of his hair, where it’s soft and strong and soap smelling, and Togami can rest his face within him and just _breathe_ , because trust builds fast as the hours tip over midnight. And trust builds fast with two months close to full behind them. The idea of any more might terrify them both. Naegi tucks his nose up into the shoulder crook nearest, sweet wood warmth for him to intake. He fears the parting of it should his lips do just that.

“You’re like a radiator,” murmurs against his skin. The hold about him doesn’t dare to loosen. “Don’t get sweat everywhere, too.”

Naegi muffles a chuckle and wiggles himself closer, summer bedclothes a short boxer and tee and ardor matching, lighting bugs breathing past the curtains to earn their name and make him long for countryside constellations. He lulls fingers beneath Togami’s shirt, just to touch him, bare skin losing its central air chill at each palm press, working up to hold him, feel him. Every touch tells him he’s grown too close too quickly, every kiss that leaves him begging. It’s a...side effect, he’ll call it despite the despise- love’s not some heart worm pill that may or may not leave the patient with liver failure. But attachment, that’s the consequence of instinct telling his breed to mate for mating alone, and get to it get to it, and protect them a hundred lives over. In ways, the process of falling for this perfect stranger has run twice the speed, and his fingers tingle at the thought of a ring round the left already now. Too close. He aches in adoration.

Togami leans to kiss his mouth, more tender than whispers on feathers. The wiggles of his back end fall beneath hands.

“Byakuya...” Moon burns his arms’ pale. Protect- he’s that urge even knowing he’s for certain no alpha, though perhaps with the off balance of their harmony, he plays it by default. How deep a velvet red does it leave upon his heart. But he’s been kissed, and he’s moaned so softly his name, silk along the bedding, love along the teeth, and light teases either iris ocean. He wonders if Togami feels the same for him. He wonders, “Are you a vampire?”

In immediacy, Naegi must gauge his reaction to feel the truth. Togami does not take to shock enough to let him know he’s been deceiving him this long. Air tickles goose pimples along his calves. No shock, no stark white sweats or tripping refusals.

“What.”

That’s... _that_ , he supposes, not a question but a plunked out _flick_ to the nose of his idiocy.

“Eh-! Ahaha, um...” He decides to play the confident, the alpha role he’s now realized suits him here, right- clear the throat and carry on. Where Togami has leant to an elbow, he himself scrambles into a postured orator. “Maybe it’s a silly question, but...Well, my friend, Hagakure, was wondering if-“

“The annoying athletic one? Or the annoying pothead?”

Hands to the knees, he winces into tautness. “...The second one. He was afraid you might be a...a vampire.” Naegi swallows. A path must be soon taken with this palavering. He searching for it, an underlying message, metaphor, theme, but he’s nudged back submissive for another to catch the conversation his own.

“You tell your friends about me,” smirks into the lowlight. Teeth gleaming so perfectly white, eyes gleaming so perfectly debonair, all tells him _of course you would_ before he’s drawn forward for kisses to the jawline, nips upon the earlobe. “How cute.”

Naegi hasn’t met another alpha that’s painted hot red at the slightest husk of a man’s voice into the ear, kisses from cheekbones to lips. No sooner is he swarmed in the thought than he’s brushed to his back and pinned at the wrists.

“Yes, I am a vampire,” stiffens him stupid, til the kisses turn to bites down his throat. Perhaps it should irk him to know he’s being jeered at this way, the whole existence of the world’s secluded second half turned to mockery for the type who’re blinded- maybe that should bother him, but being fawned over by his perceived most gorgeous being on this Earth, it quite outweighs that indignity.

He mewls into writhes, and whispers out, “Mmh- I’m your werewolf, then.”

Soon enough he’ll spill it without the backlash of murmured humor against his skin.


	5. Chapter 5

He cannot even fake the surprise when Kirigiri’s eyes narrow so sharp.

It’d come to him in the midst of one night, one night of caresses and soothe. The solution he’s dwelled on the injustice of meets such easy fruition, he’s the fool who’d never humored it, though the cleared mind that morning brings thinks he’s the fool who has. Because Kirigiri had been no drag at all for an invite to lunch, and Togami is nothing short of a pure sucker for a kiss on the lips, so Naegi sits between them both beneath the umbrella shade of his favorite spot, gnawing his lemonade straw as any kind little idiot does when sunk into silence of the anxious pulse.

Kirigiri had mouthed off the most expensive steak the diner offers, and hasn’t laid a tong to it since their server set it before her a good quarter hour prior. She doesn’t very much care to be tricked, Naegi sweats beneath knowing, and the intention hadn’t been as malicious as she may feel, and Togami knows not a peck of the issue aside from being told on the drive he’d invited his best friend to join them. A sneer and a shake, for he’s not the quickest to jump up toward a new face, yet still likes to echo off his superb way of existence to all that should meet him. This new face offers only stone brick to his attempts to pick at the conversations Naegi sparks up for them.

“Um,” and color pools his nape, “Kyouko likes...books, yeah? So does Byakuya.”

He can ignore how pusillanimous the statements sit ( _idiot_ ) if only to focus on the problem he’s pushing forth by no means; their similarities are what builds the glass betwixt them, he thinks, far past that _difference_ that sunders them that refuses to be brought up. She’d dislike him even if the night didn’t wrap her up within a pelt. Superiority complexes prove a tough straw to bend.

“Books.” A scoff billows across his tea. “The same type of _books_ you like, by authors that make their name on cheap recycled plots?”

“I didn’t know he even read any with actual words.” And one most often wouldn’t deem an insult a success, but she’s reacted, spoken just before a bite of sticky rice. Relief breathes through him. Togami cuffs his chin up against bemusement.

Sunlight reflects from his lenses. “With his taste, he’s better off.” A leg unfolds from its perch to move nearer. Soft and sweet, Naegi lifts his glass.

Closely does he choke on the ice. “Funny, I’ve been thinking the same.“

“Kyouko...” Breeze pours through their bangs. Though he’s branded upon his dense mop for a mind, he’s more astute than the recipient to what the comment buries deep. He swallows, and keeps their gazes steadied together, the third demanding his own among them shifty and warning.

Despite it, she rests back behind folded arms in all the imaginable collection. Slow scrutiny scans across the table. Naegi works himself through snap fiver grieving as he watches on. She catches next a rise with no foreshadow, stands and brushes a tress over the shoulder to turn it the opposite. “I should be going now.”

“Wait-! Kyouko, come on, please?” What he’s begging, he hardly can tell, but it’s enough for her to face him again, coast a distaste over them both, billow in the blinding afternoon.

“I’ve seen all I have to.”

Her heels click off, and don’t return for another span of nights to curse him sick.

But she does, and he does, and they do, a group of six dropped to one spot because she’s the only one with air conditioning, and mid July strangles, absolutely devours. And- well, well, _he’s_ got a cooled room too, dozens of them, but exposure is moving forward and exposure is Naegi inviting his boyfriend to spend a while at his best friend’s apartment til the sun bids relent, and Togami had shoved her off for a perfect dirty bitch (oh, if he only knew) after one lunch date left with frost upon the shoulders, yet comes along anyway, perhaps only to spite her wretched mouth. Still, too, Naegi’s wanted him to meet his friends, his family, and all six of them plus one crunched up into Kirigiri’s living room works as well a meeting as any.

He just wishes Fukawa could keep her tongue in her mouth.

“When is it gonna be _cooooler_ out?” Below them, his sister moans from her spot on the rug, flexed out in shorts and tank. “We haven’t gone for a run in weeks.”

She eeps to a foot nudging her, glancing back frenzied to Asahina’s just as frazzled expression above on the couch. Komaru clicks together something half intelligent enough to nod, and her censurer clears the throat to glance sidelong to their guest. The border between them rests only as Naegi’s thin quivers.

“Tomorrow’ll be sweater weather.” Hagakure picks a finger up from the fold over his middle. “You can count on my intuition.”

“Expect rain, then,” drips from the seventh’s cynical mouth.

Asahina sputters snickering to say, “You’re pretty funny, Togami.”

He glances a raised nose her way, though reads no malignancy until the look faces new chokes of laughter and fawning over him, crouched behind the side chair’s arm, a pool of dripped saliva forming atop. Had he his way, he’d creep his bones thrice the girth and make her tremble in reminder of what belongs not to her. Rather, he settles for shifting close enough for he and his love’s thighs to touch, hands to link. Behind the masses, Kirigiri curls leather into a fist.

He’s glad they all like his boyfriend.

Darkness draws them against asphalt, wet in the air surrounding. An arm curled round his waist makes him think he quite likes his boyfriend, too.

* * *

His boyfriend would quite like to throttle him.

“Makoto.” Color wisps the centers of them. They’ve gone along far too many sunsets to wish to keep away from one another, no, and the dinner feels warm and lovely in them now, though the exterior weaves a separate tale.

Cotton stuffs his ears as it trails past the windows- clouds fading dark into the evening. Togami is steadfast a man as ever in keeping hands two and ten, venom in either eye to push the demands forth. “Makoto,” he repeats to garner fleeting focus. His breath rests at the base of his tongue. “What the fuck are you going on about?”

The dip to his collar itches of hellfire all the sudden, he decides, running fingers across the hem, choking on oxygen he cannot spare. A recurring pattern in his epiphanies is regretting the moment they take motion- mentioning he’s the tendency to shift into a lunar beast of fantasy while his boyfriend is _driving_...not the best tactic, in hindsight.

“I...I just feel like I can trust you,” He rewrites, swallows, nods. “You’ve met my whole family now, and-and they all seem to like you- well, except Kirigiri, but she’s just...shy. I don’t know, I don’t really expect you to believe me, but a-at least if you’re busy driving, you won’t be too mad..?”

“And something makes you believe I won’t swerve off the road right now.” He watches the thinning of either eye. “I don’t know what _trust_ has to do with making a fool of me for your own fun.”

“Byakuya, I _swear_ , I’m not kidding.”

He allows a double take, a slow toss of fire to his left, back ahead for grim.

They’re hardly off his front walk before he twists into a turn about to taunt him. “Show me.”

“Show you?” Surprise clouds his vision, blinking it gone to adopt a nervous tension. Lights flick up around the hardwood, clear to see Togami’s imposing shadow cast along him, arms crossed in waiting, deathly. A sneer tugs his lip. Naegi bites his own. “Oh, uh... I... Okay.”

Lids lax to closed, flattening a breath from him before balancing himself on a step backward. The heat begins to stir at his ankles. He can feel the pressure demanding him toes to tip, til it’s up in his lungs and he’s poised to collapse up into a creature of hot chimera.

When his eyes again open, he’s five foot three and pale as paper, so he supposes something must have gone awry in the chemical scaling. “I can’t.”

“You can’t?” Togami’s quick as a snap to spit, as though he’s been preening with anticipation to be victor of veracity. Scoffing. “You’ve made such an outrageous claim, and now have no means of proving it to me? My, my, how unexpected. I’m disappointed, I thought for certain you’d turn into a goddamned _werewolf_ right here in my foyer.”

Naegi stiffens into the sardonic echoes. “Um, actually the right word is lycanthrope, werewolf is kind of offensive, but, ah-“ He hadn’t known the glare upon him could darken any further, yet there it burns, and there he twinges. “It’s just instinct to not want to change in front of a human. Maybe if you...turned around?”

“Makoto.”

“Okay, okay! Uh...” More than any pressure, he feels panic coiling up his shins beneath that radar stare. He’d collect it all up into quivers were it not for that delightful idea churning brain of his. “Oh! Do you have anything silver? _Real_ silver.”

Togami scoffs out again. “The implication that I’d keep anything less bothers me more than the this entire charade.”

Tight as ever does he still stand, though Togami plays complacent in dipping a hand to his suit coat pocket to retrieve a clasp of ticking. The way he thrusts the watch forward in a manner so subtle to release tells Naegi only one thing- _be fucking careful with it_. Not like he’s biting the bit to clutch onto it, anyway, eyeing the enemy a strained moment before reaching to accept by the chain. He breathes through the nose, brows pinched together in the rush of apprehension. Together his eyes and mouth tug open once the smell of charred flesh begins to tease him.

His hand is shaking when the watch is grasped back from him. “ _Idiot_ ,” trips through his teeth. Togami stuffs his pocket anew and goes to inspect the thick burn along his palm. “You’re more willing to subject yourself to this severe of an allergy than just admit you’re stringing me along for a gag?”

“ _Byakuya_.” Ache presses between his bite. He grasps his wrist to flex the fingers on the ailed hand, gasping out pain to its sensation. For that alone, or for paired with the agony of the heart, tears defeat him to slip from his eyes’ roots. “I-I’m just trying to...I’m trying...I’m trying _so_ hard.”

Boiled down, that’s just it. He’s trying to make the right decisions adulthood forces upon his hands, trying not to be a _liar_ past the months already put into this relationship where he’s miraculously somehow felt too ill to go out at the peak of each; within that itself, he’s trying his absolute damndest to communicate the trust he feels inside. And one could go and argue that he could take easy change in his presence if it were as bold as he claims, and he’d argue right back that nature isn’t disrupted by newfound love, okay? But- but Togami still stares to him as though a horizon florescence, and he’s trying his best, and he’s trying to well the anxiety off with the backs of his wrists, and he’s trying to be all that he can be when riddled by affliction.

He flinches when Togami approaches him to lay a palm to his cheek. The touch calls him up to look him in the eyes, and in the glass lenses over them reflect back his own marbled a bright chloric yellow, slits of black diamonds poked thin at their midsts.

Though his initial thought is to yelp backward, horrified, _horrified!_ , he rather takes to a jump, a frozen stance in the place beneath the cup of the other’s hand. Togami peers to him, breathes, pokes the thumb of that same hand to stretch the side of his mouth closest, drawing the curtain back on sunshine rows of cuspids prodding sharp enough to sever limbs. His mouth snaps back, wriggling his lips to settle them to comfort.

“...Alright,” is all the other says, and splits them to fold his arms cross the chest. “I can live with this. But keep off my furniture, don’t track mud in the house, don’t urinate on anything, no biting, chewing, drooling, or licking of any kind without prior authorization.” He pauses to tip his glasses up sharper. Naegi’s yet to wrap his mind around the first word. “If you must bark, you’ll do so only from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM, and I don’t want to find any _presents_ in my shoes. Are we clear?”

In a blink, he feels the sting leave his eyes, and talking turns a breeze with teeth and tongue retracted back; “...Do you have any Neosporin?”

A glance drags toward the burn on his palm once he lifts it. Togami huffs into a swivel of eyes to the ceiling, and beckons him to follow down the curving hardwood halls.

...Alright.


	6. Chapter 6

“That pack of dogs that chased us-“

“Yeah. They could smell me.”

“And this _family_ of yours-“

“My pack.”

It’s a tee shirt kind of weekend morning. Naegi keeps himself sprawled along the side of the bed that’s been designated as his own on countless overnights, legs a V and arms an angel’s. He leaves his gaze trained above them, not where Togami looms in an upright sit by his side, past it to oblivion as he sips on the questionnaire. Natural, it’s natural to wonder this and that after such an upheaval of his world not ten hours prior. He can only be grateful they’d waited for the new day to tumble out.

“Hm.” Togami rests himself against the headboard. “I presume you can’t be the leader with that passive attitude of yours.”

Upon satin pillowcasing, his head melds in shakes. “Kirigiri’s the alpha. That’s why she doesn’t exactly...get along with outsiders, anyone could be a threat.”

It seems he spares no care for the backstory. “A _woman_ leads your pack? I would have thought nature hadn’t sunk to such exhausting progressivism.”

“There’s an alpha bitch in every pack, guys are kind of useless in our hierarchy,” he explains beyond a frown. “You should be more open minded.”

His signature, those bratty blue eyes must loll. “Says the one who’s just referred to them all as _bitches_.” Sun climbs up their skin, alights Naegi’s expression of fatigue that chooses to write his comment off for the early morning lag. The conversation does not ping back to him, rather allowing Togami a continuum. “I’m still not entirely sold on your rouse. I’d like to see the full _change_ in effect, as you put it.”

Extremities flex themselves, calling together a sigh for the morning. “I don’t know if I can...but I could try again.” Brunette razzles upward in a clasp on posture. His hands pat the other’s cheeks. “Breakfast first, though.”

They take the stairs a lazy rhythm of feet, halfway down where skin has hardly sundered and blushing laughter blooms in full. Naegi’s dark in gratitude the whole way to the toaster singing, pleased by every touch to his waist and kiss to his neck, for what they have pushing forward without catching hardly a note to the bump they’ve stumbled over, and Togami is his as he ever was with unknowing stems and his mouth tastes just as sweet.

He’s six sausage links in when he’s drawn to look up by the deep tempt of a voice. “That makes sense now.”

Togami leans just slightly, one leg perched across the other, mug steaming in one hand. The slice of toast before him works the perfect juxtaposition to the plate across the table, china piled in buttery toast and meat and white rice aside the skyscraper of a glass of whole milk he keeps only to splash in his coffee once a while and now sustain his boyfriend’s stomach. Mouth half stuffed, Naegi kisses butter from his thumb. “What makes sense?”

He lifts the rim to sip with a smirking. The second tilts his head one fraction, but hunger outweighs curiosity and his mouth is full of rice within the minute. Adoration floods the glance upon him.

“Alright, umm...” A good half hour has dragged them to the living room next. Work emails have been checked, swiped, pocketed, everything in his boundless power to claim this sleepy Sunday for relax, for suspense, should livelihood comply. Naegi trains a keen eye on him, placed on the white velvet couch in anticipation that challenges the night before‘s violent wait. His hands rest flat to the lap, watching onward not in jeering, but a kind of excitement, Naegi might be so courageous as to guess. Either way he must summon that now, with a step behind and a clench of the arms at each side, vibrating up his flesh, down his spine. His sight clamps closed to instead envision his own wonderland. Green paves the path for his feet, his four strong clawed feet to tramp up the terrain, howl his throat raw. There’s trees in this paradise, ones that ripple in the summer wind just as his coat does by the sprite of his speed. His shoulders begin to burn in such fury he almost loses the picture, though the relief found through their tear into place alongside the spreading of every rib finds him right back in the shining morning light.

It stays even once he’s found his way back home to reality, no grass or twigs or trees, no moths or their skuttering wings to chase. Just Togami Byakuya’s living room, and Togami Byakuya himself playing the picturesque Roman god statue in his rise to examine his every inch.

“I thought you said you were a wolf,” breaks a page later, “You look more like a schnauzer.”

Cast within his glory that’s just now been muddled, Naegi braces himself with the chest puffed haughty for growls to rumble up from. The finger flicked to his nose chokes them back inside.

“Heel.”

Recovering from the wincing blink, he shakes that way and this, ears and fur and tail all flapping, and he points his muzzle up into a bark to boom across each wall. Togami’s laughter is nothing but derisive. “You’re quite cute this way,” he admits. “But you’ll need a bath if you expect to stay inside my home. It’s already beginning to stink in here.”

Naegi whimpers with every scrub of soap through his fur.

It’s rather unjust, if he were asked. Togami can’t tolerate _his_ odor- he’d hate to see his reaction to Hagakure’s wiry mop braid coat. Yet even in such a state as seeing a quarter of the color spectrum, he knows assuredly that Togami looks a handsome demon crouched down beside the bathtub, sleeves pushed to elbows and buttons freeing the clavicle. He writhes for the thrill of it once hands coast the wet dip before his tail. Suds litter in flecks. Togami sneers, plucking his glasses off to swipe the wet from them. “Stay still.”

The hair dryer is nice compensation, at least. Loud as hell, but a warmth across him sweet for sin. Comb teeth snatch knots from his coat the same time, and Naegi knows he’s twice his knelt size and could knock him cold, but the pinch of each snagged hair is tolerable with that soft hushing heat aside them. When it dies to quiet, Naegi’s first instinct rustles himself in shakes either way. A look back straightened shows him Togami’s stand up over him, hand to one hip where the button up white meets the slack tuck, head to a tilt, breath blowing bemusement. His nails clack on the bathroom tile as he ambles over to lean gainst the legs.

A palm pats his ribs before Togami crouches again, smoothing pets down his ears, neck. Dust scatters from his thick wafting tail.

“You’re handsome now that I’ve de-ratted you.” His petting trails down his chest with a kiss, tender and soft to the face. Naegi tosses his tongue from its pant to return it. Not one second later does Togami scrunch into disgust beneath the swipe of a hand across his mouth. “Recall what I said about unauthorized licking.”

As he rises, Naegi dips to a whistle whine, turning to shimmies all through when a sigh drifts another stroke between the ears.

* * *

Waking up naked from a nap on his boyfriend’s sofa hadn’t been his life’s greatest goal.

(But he couldn’t help thinking on the drive back home that his paws had been allowed on the furniture after all, and he’s smirking into a pull to the curb).

His keys clink softly as he enters the front, skin still lush with lust before he’s taken in red rim retinas at the sight along his living room’s couch, and though he feels he could certainly live a thousand lives without ever wanting to see Fukawa’s bare ass again, it’s the slightest bit funny that they’ve achieved the same connected fate the past night.

Every bit of humor floods away when the door hushes her into a burst upward.

Quicker than immediate, she shrieks fluid up from her lungs, clutching every inch of skin sucked up gainst bones. Twigs poke from the nest of her hair. “ _P-Pervert!_ Don’t look at m-me, _don’t look at me!_ ”

Hands spread before him, Naegi twists into an elbow tucked over his eyes and blush steaming below. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to! Um, do-do you know where Komaru is..?”

Blindness only heightens her voice (and smell). “G-Get out! Get out!” He senses her scrambling tumble to the floor to snuff around for her glasses, trembling the whole way to stuff herself behind a blanket.

Naegi clenches himself to heed her order. A slip around the corner wall, bump at the waist into a side table. He plays off intuition to check the second bedroom door of the apartment, and plays off thanking whatever Gods were in charge of waking her in the night enough to tuck herself into a bra and blankets, or else this sprawl upon her back would wish him ill. But she’s lain there on her pink sheet top, snurking up snores with a smile to guide the dreams in her head he’d regret slicing out; he needn’t muster the nerve, though, as he’d never dip back into the front room in this stretch, but he needn’t wake her at all for she’s stirring herself blinking at his perch on her bed.

“Good morning,” he says to her stretched arms over the head. Something pricks his simper back into place as it stood the early hours through.

Dirt smeared to her cheek circles around a yawn. She shakes her hair out by either ear, looking up to him in a matching mirth. “Hey! You missed an _awesome_ run last night. Touko’s so much fun when she gets all wolfy. Were you out with your _boooyfrieeend?_ ”

He admires how quickly her mind can take to chattering whilst so newly conscious. Still, he curls his knuckles to his mouth in a flush. “A little... Ah, sorry I missed it. Did Kirigiri go?”

“What do you mean _a little?_ ” Evidenced, the distraction hasn’t caught her. She’s careful to keep the comforter over her as she shifts to sitting. “Did you guys do weird human stuff? Watch TV? Drive a car? Read the paper? Drink coffee?”

“We do all those things,” he pouts. He fidgets with the fabric on his knees. Feelings rise like flames in his throat. “But... _heh_ , can you keep a secret?”

Truly, really, he should have known better, from experience if nothing more.

“Get out.”

“Kyouko, please-“

“Naegi.” She’s pinned him beneath her gaze. Full sun peaks into the loft. For twice consecutive a fuck up, she does not spare him the courtesy to rip his guts out in solitude; ten gleaming eyes scan along her stance and his, clashing just ahead of the front entry he’s forced nearest to. Sick rolls in his abdomen. Slunk behind the coffee table, his sister pierces him in fret, and he’d knock a knee to her jaw were she the scarlet pawed phantom to this case, but another scraggly mess tossed to the arm chair had admitted outright that she’s got ears and that walls are thin, and she’d jumped directly to their hive master not a half hour post. Decency had found her to at least wait for the pack’s next meeting in her den to eat him up.

“Heyeh, Kirigirichi, maybe you should loosen up.” To that same table, Hagakure rests his heels and hands lost behind the hair. “Naegichi said the stinky guy was totally cool with it. No worries!”

“It was shock,” she fires back. “He’ll come to his senses at any moment and destroy us at the source. You,” a finger lifts to scorn him at the chest. Lightheadedness spins him round. “Are that source. You need to leave. Don’t come back. You’ve put us all in enough danger as it is.”

“Kyouko, _please_ , I promise he’s safe. I-I really...I really love him.” He hasn’t time to delight in the first slip of it from his lips- she’s right back ahead of him by that single step.

“You care more for him than the pack you’ve lived with for years.” Her tongue clicks into a clash of each jaw. He’s... _petrified_ , never seen her express such ire out this way, never known her to be rolled within. There’s a tremor to guide it, but it comes from his bravest veins, he must he must, “If _you_ cared about me, you’d believe me and trust that I’m grown up enough know what’s best! I wouldn’t get us all killed for-for _anything_. You guys are my life.”

Buttons up her front all glint in the light as she shifts to recross her arms. “This life, or your new one. It’s your decision, grown up.”

He doesn’t know if two days straight breakdowns of the heart are healthy for him, but the stitches begin to ache underneath the throb acceleration, cuffed up in hoodie and cargo, laces half done and breakfast jam on the breath like a normal little boy who delves in the comforts of living, because he has no bills to pay or choices to make that will impact his every fiber. The bandage on his hand begins to pulsate.

None of its fair, not that he’s found a _mate_ as any only wolf is meant to, and just for the rationale he’s a bit wonky to look at, a bit different from their breed, that holds water enough to sink him. He gasps within the murk of her flat iron glower, swallows hard in a pop of ear drums, glances each frenzied way. His stare is not once met by any other. He’s alone here, will be for a forever should he listen to the defiant brat in his chest telling him to slam that door right in her face and look back not a glance. He’s alone here.

Asahina kills the silence. “Why not just turn him? Then Naegi can stay and he can be part of us, and we won’t have to worry!”

A half dozen bulbs click at once, twigs snapped in rainforests and dimes dropped from pockets. Kirigiri garners the most focus, the top tier tree top decision decider, who wets her lips now, trains her look upon him steady.

“That would work,” shocks him white. “He’ll need to learn his place before he’s allowed here. I sense that will take quite a while.”

“Woohoo! Seven in the pack, we’re really rebuilding!” Asahina’s grin spills sunshine the same as Komaru’s perked glance upward. Hagakure tilts into a smiling himself. Fukawa clenches at the shoulders with eyes magnified behind her lenses, then settles into gnawing at her bottom lip to contain the rapture.

“Hold on,” Naegi must ruin. His head dips an inch below, shifting about the stares upon him. Still that sunlight simmers. “Isn’t that...risky? What if doesn’t work right? What if it kills him?”

And he doesn’t know what he’s expected, but Kirigiri’s one shoulder shrug isn’t such a comfort. “You didn’t think to ask the risks when you chose to out our entire race.”

It’s hard to recall whether that’s true or not. Regardless do his fingers meet at the tips, pitiful glints in every blink. Alphas feed no mercy. A beta to fellow beta, though- “H-Hey... I think we’ve been too hard on Makoto over this...” Komaru’s hands clench in the short white cotton of her skirt lap. “Our mom was a regular human. If some cross-loving hadn’t happened, we’d have never been born!”

“That means _nothing_ ,” and Komaru vanishes back into a grasp on Hagakure’s scruffy legs. Kirigiri twists forward again from the lash behind, where Naegi’s placed in nonplus at her outburst, where everyone at equal drops the same expression of awe, where she herself casts shade to the ear tips and nose. He knows she’s a funnel of emotion, though hardly does she ever let it be known. Unless it is that she’s so struck by power in the throat, times only of the tightest strain, and that is when Naegi snaps his jaw closed like a gentleman, and nods his chin down once.

“Your father-“

“Leave,” she demands, points around a full circle. “Everyone.”

They brace their breath s altogether. In gradual motions, he watches his sister, ears protruding though pressed flat, wobble up from her knees, watches tail betwixt the legs Asahina and Hagakure slink beside Fukawa’s crawl forward past him, until he drinks the nerve to move at all. Longing aims from him. He’d like to run to her now, grasp her at the shoulders and pour every last sip of his care out for her, work through every ache that sunders perfection.

The door clicks behind five shivering spines.


	7. Chapter 7

Cuddling is always the best remedy.

His nose burns deliciously with the smell of Burberry. Arms caress him within the lap he rests, though they sprout to hands busied on running business hours to their finest from his home office’s sanctity. He nuzzles closer that neck’s crook. Weekday afternoons entice him.

“Bastard,” muffles from the lips above him, a quip every so often at whatever’s gone on beyond his computer monitor. Naegi finds it only the most endearing.

He doesn’t aspire to resemble a rebellious highschooler, it’s merely that with every push to coax him away from love’s light, he finds himself another step further inside. Togami has yet to spear a fault from himself- aside from the daily life of cold shoulders to strangers, an ego up to JAXA and incurable haughty bitch disorder, but that’s all the puzzle pieces that work together to form Togami, so he wouldn’t call them flaws at all. His boyfriend- his lover his mate his life, oh what a connection they’ve got, and just maybe it’s that feral beast in him again that thrives on quick fucks and territory to claim before anyone else, and maybe he can’t finish a single thought in his rambles because if one thing leads too far to another he’ll trip and fall and smash his front teeth in. And he needs those teeth. And Togami’s hot pulse is _so_ near to them now. He swallows. Ah, dammit.

The suggestion’s yet to vacate. _Turn him_ \- well, well _no_ way in hell, there’s been so little recorded outcomes where the victim’s left with any gusto. He thinks on Nevermind and her pack, how the darkness surrounds their eyes of murky rouge and reflects back upon himself. That cannot happen to anyone else- he won’t allow it. He won’t.

...And there’s the possibility of it all rolling smooth as blades on ice. Halfway is he certain that’s how Hagakure found their pack, though believing anything from his mouth proves child’s play over and over, coupled with the fog surrounding every past among them. He knows himself, that he’d horrified his grandmother into a near stroke the first time she’d seen him fuss enough for ears to peek up through matted brunette. He knows his sister, the way she’d snipped holes in all her rompers for an easy tail slot, and the daycare worker had called their mother with suspicions of schizophrenia on her breath. Beyond that, they’re each their own mystery, even with the loyalty built up through trial, tragedy.

Suddenly, he’s urged to pant, “Byakuya.”

Suddenly, he offers a grunt, and nothing further, until the tongue flat up his throat makes the lump within it bob.

“What is it,” snaps a businessman with no time for inflection, even, shifting himself to better angle the other for touches all down him. Naegi’s fingers delight in his top buttons to let his lips dance along collar bones. He’s astride him now, kisses melting up the neck to the chin to the mouth. The feeling of hands preferring his hips makes a wiggle run through them.

Their mouths part and press a dozen times over, lays his forearms forward enough to cup the angles of the jaw before him, and kiss and kiss and kiss and kiss as if it were on clearance, lips wet with lust, lids midnight forest in the middle of the day.

“Byakuya,” plays the repetition. Kisses place gentle to his mouth’s corner, breathing him in, existing. “I love you.”

His stillness is expected, though it lasts only a frame before he’s drawn them apart for Naegi to rest back and take his eyes, ones that hold a new fire behind. “Dogs will love anyone that feeds them.”

More daisy than dachshund, he wilts atop him. “ _Byakuyaaa_... I mean it.”

“Right,” he outlets, sighs, “...Oh, don’t make me say it. You must know.” To the reception of blinks, his head tips backward, blond to office chair leather, sits it righted to grasp the other’s beneath the chin. This kiss- it’s the fudge drizzled to every sundae he’s ever eaten, satin on his skin, lamp heat for the nighttime tongue. “I love you, Makoto.”

Split again, Naegi sits on heaven’s cumulus. His mouth twitches to a waver that, once paired with heat rushed to the face all over, is too mortifying to bear, and he tucks himself forward to bury his face in the other’s chest. Laughter billows above him, one soft rap, trails a hand up his back.

“You make me feel good,” he goes on, rests his chin to the hair below it. He’s quite the master with deep buried words without a gaze clapping him. “I’d be content spending my life with you, if that’s how it must turn out.”

Romantic. He burrows his way up to the light, heat permeating his complexion still. The idea of a lifetime means null to his race- death is there and inevitable, yes, but the same way water’s there for the dromedaries a thousand meters into the Sahara. Already, he’s had to watch humanity come and go, and he’s been greeted with hugs round the waist and _oh, you haven’t aged in five years!_ And he’d shrugged and smiled and he’d blamed genetics, and if only they could hear him spin the tale of ancestries they’ve yet to ever know of. Togami will take his hand down the aisle, sift a gold band upon him, and once it’s all over he’ll be twenty five again and throwing out the fruit baskets people seem to think make widows feel all better. If that’s how it must turn out.

Naegi kisses him with all the fervor a man can muster, and says to him, “I want to ask you something.”

Fifteen minutes pass before the lecture even begins to taper.

“You _must_ be insane, you must.” They’ve migrated, because Togami had stormed out at the first syllable, because the living room downstairs has much more room for pacing. “I cannot understand what would make you even _think_ I’d be willing to let you turn me into a filthy peabrained mutt and mingle with the lot of you. I have more important things to do with my life than sniff my own ass.”

Metaphorically, he’d argue. Though he’s caught too deep in wincing woe to speak a cent, placed to the cushion lip to watch his ranting spiral on. He feels himself the little one getting chastised for chewing up the mattress fluff, but he no longer has his father here to swoop in and excuse his teething, not with Togami’s fury filled up to the skull, arms akimbo as he breathes slowly the opposite direction.

Naegi tips his nose forward. “...I’m sorry. It-It was just an idea. But,” and this is where his eyelids sting, “But if you don’t...I’ll probably get kicked out of my pack.”

Distaste flips from his teeth. “What, the alpha bimbo can’t handle real intelligence threatening her own?” A square toed shine taps the wood to face him again. “Don’t guilt trip me. It won’t you get you anywhere but thrown out of _here_ as well.”

Stunned, but he nods. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I just...I can’t stand the thought of losing you. But-But it’s okay if you don’t want to, if I had the choice I wouldn’t either. Just... _maybe_ -“

“This is _exactly_ what I knew would happen.” Naegi draws his mouth flat to allow his one man game of banter to flourish on. It’s dark within the bounds of the room, leaving Togami a sliver of peace in keeping himself on display like this, lacerated down the axial core for all his organs to be admired. His shoulders demand level. “You’ve nothing to gain from this relationship, unless I’m changed to be just exactly like your ideal.” His arms rise to fold while his eyes go horizontal. “You’d be much better off with someone more like you- that Kirigiri one, I see no reason for you not to run off with her. It’s biology.”

Museum, museum, he’s the goddamned Louvre at noon. Stars spin in Naegi’s lungs. “Byakuya...” And he doesn’t mean at all to sputter amusement out, rather callous of his shoulders to shake the way they do, tossing a palm to his mouth to encapsulate them back. “You think Kirigiri is like me?!”

When he rises, he stumbles into hands on the knees. His feet scuffle toward the room’s center, straightening himself right in a whip of the neck up to show off rows of razor tip teeth glistening in hysterics. A claw hooks itself stuck in a thread in placing a hand to Togami’s chest, and it only works to make him snort harder, pull it back with apology to stuff over his face again. “I’m sorry, I-I’m not laughing at you I promise.” He controls himself to posture and poise, though three seconds spent glancing at the expression of muddled confusion is enough to make him bow forward. Pain presses his jaw elongated. He shakes himself wildly about to huff it to normalcy.

“You’re not making a very compelling case for yourself.” Togami’s chest lifts him bolder. Naegi rubs a sleeve across his pert nose of only freckled flesh, gust out the mouth to render himself corralled.

“I’m sorry,” he nods forward to reach for one hand. “It’s just...I’m _nothing_ like Kirigiri, it doesn’t matter if we’re the same species. She’s so... _roar!_ and I’m so... _arf_.”

Two fingers push his glasses into place. “...Some sort of werewolf slang I’m not privy to,” he mutters out. Naegi breathes piano plunk sweetness. He captures his either hand now, looks him grand in the eyes and brims them both in that determination he keeps wrapped up in his heart. “No one could ever be better for me than you are, Byakuya. I like you just how you are, and you do, too.”

His smirking holds only that same kind curve. Togami sears at either ear, though he’s colored even more so in the pride he’s earned his whole life through. “You’re lucky to have held my attention,” he says with one arm curling their forms close. “I don’t usually go for men who bark at the mail carrier.”

Naegi wiggles into a smile. “I only did that once,” vibrates beneath the kisses on his neck. They’ve settled, though the storm rages unhindered ahead of them, ahead of _him_. He’ll have to have a solution to scrawl on the back of each issue card tossed his way in the coming time, but the time will come for that, and he has time to worry over it before it comes. He’s dizzy with ardor when he’s lifted off his feet and spun into more laughing kisses.

That’s all he needs. He’s got time.


	8. Chapter 8

An entrance to his home greets him in shouts.

“Naegichi’s here!”

“Makoto, Makoto!”

“There you are, hurry up! We’ve been waiting forever!”

Eyebrows sprint an inch higher. “Huh?!” He blinks along the span of four others crowding around his living room, dressed down to throwaway fabrics and hunger in each iris. Komaru leaps forward to pound her baby sister fists upon his bicep.

“Let’s go, the moon is gonna rise in less than an hour!” Behind her, Hagakure cups two hands at the mouth to howl up at the ceiling. Fukawa rattles at the noise, though spits herself, “Don’t make us regret siding with you. Kirigiri will maul us all if she fi-finds out!”

A finger scratches at his chin, and he’s shedding his jacket to leave behind whilst Asahina and Komaru shove him for the door. “Right, I forgot it was full tonight.” Memories of early afternoon surface, the one upon which he’d struggled so dearly to keep his facial bones from creaking, likewise where he’d trembled for the kisses on his flesh and _begged_ to be ravished within lavish champagne sheets just afterward, though that’s a story that must twist itself down the drain to find a setting more appropriate. Their feet begin to match their hearts’ pounding at a hop off the exterior pavement. The very first patch of field has Asahina flipping into cartwheels. Slobber whips behind snarling jaws rosy in want. He revels in the gift of this magnificence.

These exact tracks of land aren’t recognized, though a half mile in proves no eye watering scent to deter them, so skin peels into fur and legs shatter below him, accepting the nudges of muzzles that admire his fresh kempt coat. His shoulders shimmy into a better fit, setting with such a satisfaction in their _pop pop!_ that howls leak as froth from the mouth. Yellow almond slits glow hazy to match the craters risen overhead.

He chases the open air as though it were his future tempting him. The time to catch it in his jaws stretches as long as his forever shins can carry him, down the bone and back until he can say he’s more satiated than he already feels below the skin now. Grass shreds under every bound. Beside him, Fukawa’s eyes bobble round red, tongue lolling with hoots, checks him at the hip for a bark to the sky. Asahina’s flying at his second side, body wiggling all serpentine in her gallops to free the itching fire.

Rush flips his legs forward. The girls gain speed over him still, curving all around him with two more bottle rocket shadows joining the sprint out of his sight among forest brush. The obstacle course of trees makes his lungs burn as he weaves through them. It’s refreshing, it’s so damn sensational to suck in the night air, to feel the wind braiding his fur. He inhales a strong measure, wood and water, and- and leaves scatter all around at his skid to a stop, close to vaulting over his own front feet. Rather his muzzle points to that same ground, snuffling a wet trail all up into a sneeze that quakes him. But it doesn’t matter- he’s found the source, trickling centimeters of lush honeydew.

His approach toward her keeps his head slunk low. There’s no doubt his teeth could gnash her down for the count in this state, porcelain done up in lilac braids, yet spare her a nip, he’d never once dare to consider. He approaches her. She’s silent as the night without its cicada song.

Leather peels from one hand. The glove tucks into a pocket, its mirror following suit, and her bare palm scrubbing down his scalp ruffles him in all the sweetest ways. Gentle as ever, a lick to her knuckles returns it.

Kirigiri clasps herself up into coat and claws before he has even the chance to urge it. She shakes her mighty self up into fluff, glances to him sidelong, shoots off paces ahead to stretch those tendons. He stands a moment in admiring her, then wags himself off to chase the rest of his pack in a flaming sprint.

The stars drink in howls, harmonized from six, hours through the twilight dusk.


End file.
